Claire Williams: “She will be doing exactly what Valtteri [Bottas] would have been doing [when he was a test driver]. She’s got the responsibility that she would have to set up the car. She knows the car, she’s done a lot of preparation in the simulator. She’s perfectly competent to do tomorrow’s session without causing any hindrance to the team.”

FIA race director Charlie Whiting: “Two things drivers were concerned about. One was fairness. Fairness being a leader is more likely to lose his lead from a standing start than he is from a rolling start. Whether that’s true or not, I’m not quite sure.”

“He doesn’t really give advice in that regard. If he does it’s not so easy to take the advice. In hindsight I would always take it but in the first moment it’s never so easy to just accept it, I’ll often try to argue the point.”

“Our car was really strong [in Bahrain], with a lot of awkward slow-speed corners and angles – so tracks in that mould are good for us. Having said that, this track here in Silverstone is significantly different: high-speed corners – so this weekend might come down a bit hard on us.”

Happy birthday!

On this day in F1

Fernando Alonso led the first 32 laps of the French Grand Prix ten years ago today but Ferrari used a four-stop refuelling strategy to get Michael Schumacher into clear air so he could jump ahead of the Renault driver and win.

On the final lap Rubens Barrichello displaced the other Renault of Jarno Trulli for third place:

@mashiat
Why not? Overall he was beating Alonso in 2004 and was leading him in the points up to his last race with Renault before getting sacked even after not scoring points for 4-5 races straight following France 2004, which I’m sure can be partly attributed to his falling out with Flavio…

From what I’ve read about it, things started to go downhill very early on in the season. Briatore wanted Alonso to be the team’s number one driver – if someone would win a race, it would be Alonso. Then comes along the Monaco GP, where Trulli beats Alonso fair and square (Trulli took it easy passing the backmarkers, Alonso took more risk and hence he crashed). So Trulli won the Monaco GP, and not Alonso – that one did not go down well with Briatore.

The error from Trulli during the French GP was silly, but it gave Briatore the ultimate opportunity to put Jarno back in his place. As a result, Trulli performance started to degrade (although that pole at Spa was magical). He got replaced by Villeneuve, who didn’t do any better.

Apart from Hamilton, Trulli was the only teammate who could fight Alonso. He fully deserved his win in the Monaco GP, although he was helped somewhat by the Schumachers. I never understood why he was punished so heavily for his minor mistake in France. From that moment he lacked all confidence and Villeneuve didn’t perform any better. I guess it served Renault well that year.

It started when Trulli fired Briatore as him manager and got some other guy. It’s much simpler than you are making it out to be. His preference might have only been a consequence of the reason I stated. You can expect that Briatore wasn’t the most professional guy, and also probably vengeful, and that’s why he wanted suddenly to see Alonso beat him so bead.

Nira Franco:”On Friday there will be a woman for the first time in 22 years, what do you think?
Sergio perez:”Yes Susie, a great driver and showing that women can also be in this difficult world. Hope she does well, it is also difficult to judge her work just in one practice. She is not familiar with the car, the cars are hard to drive. Silverstone is a hard circuit so don’t expect too much from her.”
NF: “But would you like to have a woman as team-mate because we are very complicated”
SP: “No no, imagine if a woman beats you that would be bad, would be better to have her in the kitchen.”﻿

The title of that Perez interview is a textbook example of a sensationalist headline. Not only it is not a direct quote, but it’s also out of context. His last remark was clearly a joke, and it wasn’t a joke about women, but a joke about himself and inflated egos of male drivers.

@maroonjack To be clear on one point, the headline attributed to it in the round-up (“Sergio Perez: ‘Susie would be better in the kitchen'”) is how the video was titled at the time the round-up was posted. Since then the person who posted the video changed the title on it.

Its amazing how many people read the title, assume the worst & sound of on it without even reviewing the article/video/actual source themselves and form their own opinion.
My biggest issue is when I trust the site you’ve read the article title on and assume its legit, and then find its sensationalist and completely different once in context.
Doesn’t stop people regurgitating nonsense as the truth because they read it on what most people assume is a reputable site.
It makes me go elsewhere for my news and feel sorry for those mislead.@keithcollantine I fully understand these are not your headline titles but those of the original stories.

No. The headline suggests that he meant something like “women can’t drive, they should stay in the kitchen”. He actually said that Susie is a good driver, then he was asked if he would like a woman as a teammate, to which he answered that no, because losing to a woman would be too much, so she better stay in the kitchen. As if to say that it was for his sake (or men’s) that women stay in the kitchen, so they don’t start beating men. It’s still not the best comment, but not what the headline and the video title imply.

It’s a big difference, in my opinion. It’s the difference between “a woman can’t drive” and “I’d rather not race against a woman because she could beat me”. If he had used a different phrase instead of “stay in the kitchen”, it wouldn’t have been taken so badly. But I suppose we disagree.

I agree with Diego. Perez is actually making fun of himself by saying that his ego would be bruised if he’s beat by a woman. That’s a huge difference from stating that women should be in the kitchen. One degrades them, and the other is more self-deprecating. I mean… instead of a knee-jerk reaction in the name of political correctness, just stop and think for a minute about what’s actually intended. It might just avoid so many of the mindless witch-hunts we see these days.

@ironcito@fer-no65 maybe he should have complimented Susie by saying in the end something like “and that’s why I should train more so she can’t beat me”.
That kitchen comment sounds like the cavemen era.

Q: On friday there’s going to be a woman for the first time in 22 years, what do you think about it?

A: Yes, Suzie. A great, great driver, and, well, showing that women can be in this difficult world and I hope he can do well, it’s difficult to judge a job in practice, she doesn’t know the car, these cars are very difficult to drive, Silverstone is a tricky circuit, so don’t expect big things from her.

Q: would you like to have a women as team mate?

A: No, no, imagine when a woman beats you, that takes the biscuit, better she goes to the kitchen, to the kitchen rather than cars.

I hope she puts up a better time in practice than Perez lol. I have been a Suzie fan for a while and I think it would be great to see her in an F1 race. She has a great attitude and a positive personality. Perez was very disrespectful, regardless of how he worded it. Suzie has done nothing to warrant that kind of comment, even if it was in jest.

Even if he meant such a statement in the best possible, most humorous way, it’s an idiotic thing to say in front of a microphone. Women aren’t represented at all in F1 really, and having him come out and state that on the weekend Wolff will be taking part is doubly idiotic. I’m no bleeding heart political correctness obsessive, but the undercurrent of casual sexism in his ‘joke’ leaves a bad taste.

@xjr15jaaag and @dryyoshi: The implication is that to be beaten by a mere woman is shameful. Then on top of that, a suggestion that the kitchen would be a better place for Susie? If one of my colleagues in the male-dominated white-collar industry I work in said something similar to me, I would consider it disrespectful and sexist. I don’t see why it should be considered “banter” when it’s in front of the world’s media to boot.

No, the headline is false. He said something closer to “it would be better if Susie was in the kitchen”. It’s a different meaning than “Susie would be better in the kitchen”. He doesn’t say she would be better. He says it would be better (for him) if she was in the kitchen.

It should actually be noted that the whole “women – kitchen” thing is a popular joke thats going around at the moment. Its a joke men openly use when speaking with women in a playful and teasing way (often when flirting).

So I can understand why he said it – he said it thinking people would “get it”.

Is it? Never heard it used that way in any surroundings where I would consider “even” positions for men and women on the job / in private @joshua-mesh.

I am pretty sure that most women over here would take it as a rude comment. The more quick to react might add a snarky comment about him staying on the farm equipment if he didn’t like being beaten by a women though.

I dont know why that is. I mean the people I have hung with, even the women take part in making the jokes. Like for example at a bar to come and say hi she’d say “Hey, just thought I’d take a break from making sandwiches for a moment to come say hello!”. We’d all laugh and when we’re done chatting and she’s about to bugger off, one person would make a comment such as “Okay enough talking, you better get back into the kitchen before we call social services!”. It all ties back in with her original joke and as everyone knows its a joke, no one is offended.

Hm, I wonder whether the women saying so would really not mind the situation though @joshua-mesh. To me that looks more like a women “surviving” in a world where she knows there will be prejudice against her by confronting it up front.
The women I know might do that as well in such circumstances. But I would think that if you/your buddies reaction would be something like “Oh, you run a catering service nowadays” you would have a far better chance of the women not feeling you are all j***s.

ironcito I think Perez was trying to make a joke at his own expense, but actually it backfired in two ways. First, he implied that it is somehow embarrassing to lose to a woman – i remember from the Suzie Wolff documentary (which i only saw about 5 minutes of), but she out-qualified her teammate and then the team started ribbing him saying things like “Ahh, you lost to a girl!”. Needless to say Suzie was not amused. So that’s the first issue.

Second he used the dreaded “back in the kitchen” phrase – again i’m sure it was supposed to be a joke at his own expense, but whether it’s a joke or not it’s still a sexist comment implying that’s the ‘standard’ role the women should be fulfilling.

Still, i hope for his sake these comments aren’t blown out of proportion. He just needs to be a bit more careful with phrasing (much like Sir Stirling Moss!).

Perez’s comment is exactly what we talked about in the round up. He starts by saying it’s a good example, and ends up saying something like that…

Suzie is setting an example. Nevermind how good she is. We need it. The sport needs it. It’s no good that people like Perez, Stirling Moss or Richard Petty, legends or current drivers, show that kind of disrespect for the other gender, based on nothing…

What is Michèle Mouton gonna say? she was far more succesful at her sport than Perez could ever be. Driving in the most scary and fast era in rallying, arguably the most difficult motorsport there is, and she almost got the championship.

She just go there and slap Perez in the face…

We need more examples…. for girls to get interested, and to kill those stupid “they shoud stay in the kitchen” arguments.

@fer-no65 I don’t see why F1 “needs” a woman driver. Sure diversity is nice, but when your just trying to check boxes it undermines actual progress. I would like to see the same standards held across the board regardless of gender, nationality, sexuality etc.

Obviously there are numerous things wrong with F1, but the one thing that remains fairly reasonable is it’s ability to weed out talent. There will be exceptions of course, but for the most part if you aren’t good enough you get found out pretty quickly.

Wolff’s CV is atrocious, and isn’t representative of the quality of the other drivers. All of the other drivers around her age (31) have either been former F1 champions (Alonso,Button, and Raikkonen) or former champions in a lower category (Massa and Sutil.) for comparisons I just used drivers over 30.

I for one want a female driver that has put in the results to back her position. Needless to say we should find out in a couple hours of she is capable.

I would like to see women drivers rise up through the ranks, just like every other driver. You don’t walk into driving F1 cars in your late 20’s and early 30’s and suddenly decide your going to race. That’s not fair on anyone.
The point for me is that Suzie has got there under monetary means and gives female drivers no credibility. She hasn’t earnt her drive, she’s bought it. She’s mediocre and I would prefer to see a woman be chosen because she can be fantastic, deservedly driving and competing.

@rybo It’s less about women being needed in F1 and more about F1’s image changing from being the boys brigade that it currently is. Society as a whole seems to make it hard for women to enter motorsport, because it’s seen as a masculine sport (big strong man handles lairy dangerous car etc), so if one of the top levels can once again attract competitive members of both sexes, then it just sorta furthers society.

In a nutshell – F1 doesn’t need a woman, but a woman should be allowed to reach F1 if she is good enough…

Susie Wolff today gets to demonstrate whether she is good enough and nothing should stop her, whether that’s outdated gender laws or men hoping they won’t get shown up.

@optimaximal Your campaigning for change for the sake of change. She had numerous years to prove she was good enough, but she has yet to win a race let alone a championship.

Society doesn’t care about gender parity in Motorsport. It’s hopeful, but ultimately it come down to happiness for the individual. Some people just don’t find racing that interesting or entertaining. And who are we to tell them otherwise?

There were women F1 drivers long before Wolff and there will be long after her as well. Wolff isn’t some “savior” who is suddenly going to bring girls into their local kart track.

If her name was Scott Wolff everyone would be beside themselves with anger. I’m all for bringing women into F1 not just as drivers, but engineers and support staff as well. However the moment you treat them differently you become the problem your trying to solve.

I agree totally. A man age 31 getting to drive their first formal one car would be laughable.
Suzi Wolf is no one special. If she was a champion in karting, or rally, or GT then I’d be interested. If Seb Loeb wanted to have a quick go, I’d like to see that. He’s a record breaking racing driver, not the wife of a rich man. I’ve got 50p to spare and a cycling proficiency certificate, can I get to have a go?

Society as a whole seems to make it hard for women to enter motorsport, because it’s seen as a masculine sport (big strong man handles lairy dangerous car etc), so if one of the top levels can once again attract competitive members of both sexes, then it just sorta furthers society

Have you seen Massa, Rosberg? They’re certainly not testosterone-filled agression machines like, say, a rugby player.

Differently from a contact sport, motorsports include the intellectual capacities of the participants in direct way, we’ve heard the expression or its variants, “it’s like playing chess while knitting and running a marathon at the same time”, I think that’s why I take such offense in how Pérez delivered his message.

I dont think it’s fair to take Sergio’s quote out of context. if you know spanish you can clearly see that he is joking. It might be a bad joke to say out loud in an interview which thousands of people are going to hear but he isn’t serious about it. In Mexico this kind of acid humour isn’t frowned upon and it is always taken for what it is; just a joke. But Sergio should definitely learn that in other countries this is clearly not the case.

On YouTube the translation is given as ‘… imagine if a woman beats you that would be bad, would be better to have her in the kitchen’. Not a great choice of words but the headline is somewhat misleading…

“So, Hamilton, how is your friendship with Rosberg?”
“Rosberg, can you maintain the lead?”
“Vettel, what do you think of Ricciardo?”
“Alonso, how much % are you gonna push this weekend?”
“Kimi, can I ask you a question? No, oh, ok.”

Yeah but that’s what I don’t like nowadays, everyone is too sensitive, and there’s always someone that is offended.

We want drivers with more personality not PR robots well guess what, that’s Sergio’s personality right there, you may not like it but that’s how it is, I prefer to hear bad taste jokes from him rather than the usual PR nonsense to be honest.

@mantresx The point isn’t just that he said something sexist – it’s the wider-reaching connotations, given that Wolff is trying something that hasn’t been attempted for 20 years…

Yes, he was self-deprecating in the delivery, but he also needs to remember that if Susie *is* faster than him, then he should get better, not consign her to the kitchen (i.e. make it so she can’t race against me and humiliate me again).

There’s a difference between “bad taste jokes” and comments which perpetuate discriminatory attitudes. If for example Perez had said, “I would hate to be beaten by a black man – I’d prefer it if he went back to working on the plantation”, would that be considered just a “bad taste joke”? No, it would rightly be seen as outdated and extremely offensive racism. But it’s OK because it’s about a woman instead.

I can sort of understand the antique Bernie Ecclestone making jokes like this – he is after all from the Land that Time Forgot – but it’s a shame to hear it from a young man. It probably says more about Mexico’s cultural attitudes towards women than about Perez’s in particular, however.

The difference between the two would be that there’s a stereotype that still exists where women aren’t interested in/experienced enough to race cars at the higher levels. They are still a novelty, or perceived to be.

If there ever was such an analogue with black men and racing its long since disappeared.

Also, preferring thay a person would go back to being a piece of property with no human rights is slightly different to preferring someone would go into a room in a house.

Perhaps i was being a tad obtuse, but i’d argue the differences in the severity and timescale of your comparison was also misleading.

I read your comments as coming from a stereotyping standpoint, and wrote a response for such, but during that i realised you’re coming from a “historical roles” train of thought, which kind of changes the argument.

If it was concerning stereotypes then i’ll defend my points, as the stereotype of “black man” is not slavery.

Buuuuuut anyway, i don’t personally see Perez’s comments as offensive, just a bit clumsy considering he was talking to press spin-masters and knowing that with such a big audience reach, the likelihood of it being picked up by a lot of highly-strung people was…high.

Even if it offends some people, so what? What an awful place the world would have to be if no-one would get offended.

It wasn’t unwise because of its face-value; but it was unwise considering his words could spur on others who don’t stop at the playful Boys vs Girls dynamic (which is fine), but think that its funny & cool to carry these attitudes into serious everyday life situations where it could stop people getting jobs, etc.

Whether some of the humour is lost in translation or not, Perez’ comments are very poorly chosen, and will be rightly condemned. However, he clearly does not say “Susie would be better in the kitchen” so that headline is quite misleading.

If I was a track owner I would be asking Bernie serious questions?
1. This track is worth xxmillion dollars and cost xmillion per year to maintain and you want to use it and keep all the revenue from the TV coverage, you want me to remove all my sponsors signs and trackside advertising and replace with your own, you also want exclusive catering rights.
2. So tell me Bernie, how much are you going to pay me to rent this facility for 5 days ?
3. You want me to pay you what?
4. Have you done the math, do you realise how much I would have to charge spectators just to break even ?
5. Where are you going to run your circus when the track owners insist on being able to make a profit ?

1 yep
2 i didnt get to be a billionaire by writing alot of cheques…
3 the market value of my product
4 i dont care about yor finances, do i look like a charity worker?
5 Azerbijan or whatever place will pay the most.

Because Bernie is greedy and controls a brand with high market value, it’s like “FIFA World Cup”, countries spend billions to host a World Cup and FIFA takes the money. It’s like F1, the host spends the money and FOM takes the profit.

“the perfect business is the one with negligible investment and huge profits”

Does seem like the reporter was almost baiting him to make a controversial comment by saying ‘us women can be difficult to work with’ and he just went along with the joke albeit with a poor choice of words. Perhaps it was a little stupid for him to say it infront of all the cameras, praise in public, criticize in private and all that.

Its nicer saying that he would rather have her in the kitchen than be beaten by her (as it implies she would/could beat him) at least than saying it for other reasons. It only makes it a tad less bad a reaction to the que offered by the woman doing the interview (angling for a response like this one probably)

Maybe it can be taken partly as a joke that might be fine in Mexico (which would mean confirming prejudices to be largely present), but I know I would quickly end up in the kitchen by myself if I expressed any such tought at home!

Its strange @bascb , if I’d make that kind of comment at home in either an overtly or dry humour way, me and my girlfriend would find it hilarious and she’d come back with some “blokey bloke” stereotype and we’d still be getting on royally as per. – although we both enjoy our share of in-jokes and non-pc humour.

Although I too would eventually end up I’m the kitchen on my own, as she never cooks when I’m about.